Growing Profits with Direct Response Radio

From media buying to creating radio commercials, we know what works. As direct response experts we’ve tested thousands of media buys and radio ads, amassing an expansive collection of results data which we’ve tracked and recorded. We use this database to assess what works best – allowing each campaign we work with to draw from this vast experience.

Despite the introduction of other platforms, radio still reaches more Americans everyday than nearly any other single medium. The average adult in the US consumes 90 minutes of radio per day.

User immersion in radio has proven effective for advertisers of all types but it’s especially coveted by the results-driven world of direct response marketing because of it’s efficiency and agility. The on-demand nature of the radio media world ensures your ads start and stop quickly and radio’s low production costs make changing your commercial or testing new elements incredibly low-risk.

Direct Response Radio

There are reasons behind every media choice. However, few marketing mediums are as versatile, mutable, and target-able as radio. We consider direct response radio to be the most efficient way to test messaging prior to scaling across multiple media outlets. In direct response – one word can make or break your success – you have 60 seconds and every word needs to sell your target, inspire them to pick up the phone or go to your squeeze page. You can find this wording effectively and efficiently using radio. Once found, you can launch it confidently across other, more costly media.

Local Radio

Local radio gives you a very targeted, efficient way to test radio in general, specific personalities, dayparts, and messaging. With local radio, you have flexibility and the ability to quickly do “A/B Split Tests” to experiment with changes to your campaign. Once we scale any campaign, we continue to use our highest performing local radio to efficiently monitor the impact of time on your message.

Local radio offers a sustainable lead source for local businesses looking for high quality leads. There are opportunities to schedule new campaigns or pull campaigns very quickly. In fact, campaigns can be centered around events such as flooding, severe weather, outbreaks of virus strains (ie. Flu), pollen counts, or any number of factors that impact a business target consumer or patient population.

For businesses with a national scope, it is often much more efficient to purchase national network radio. We do this once we are certain of the programming or specific personality that draws the highest quality and quantity leads through local testing. In many cases, national radio can be purchased at a much more efficient cost than you can achieve if you were to purchase every local station carrying this program individually. Once you are certain of your sweet spot and can negotiate a favorable rate with the network carrier – you can sustain a campaign indefinitely. However, we consider it a best practice to continue to run on a local station or two so that you can see when your message starts to fade. In this way, you can change your messaging and refresh response before the national network drop off sets in.

Unwired Radio

Often, once we know the highest performing programming and personalities, we put together unwired networks rather than purchasing the full national network. This allows us to target specific geographies and put together programs that in many cases achieve cpm’s even more favorable than national network while focusing our dollars in the markets key to our client’s success. Building custom “unwired networks” for clients is one of the chief ways Rainstorm Media Group eliminates ad spend waste.

Streaming Radio

Online and streaming radio services like Pandora offer a unique opportunity for advertisers as they offer the advantage of radio – as the heard medium – coupled with habit-based user targeting. Online and broadcast radio advertising response rates increase 2x – 3.5x among consumers who also listen to Internet Radio. Interactive companion banners give users the option to respond to the ad, providing advertisers with immediate ROI and CTR data. Whether you’re a brand marketer or running direct response campaigns, online radio makes an excellent compliment to traditional radio media plans.

“Ad dollars spent on streaming radio has grown rapidly over the last few years while dollars spent on broadcast have held steady. When we look at the data, we don’t see dollars being diverted from terrestrial radio into streaming, but instead we see dollars going to streaming that were otherwise spent in other online avenues that didn’t perform.” ~Jessica Jones, Founding Partner/Executive Director